How to use Windows’ Your Phone app to connect a phone to a PC

Why does Microsoft think you need the Windows 10 Your Phone app? Because it preserves the most important functions of a phone: access to your photos, messages, notifications, calls, and even your phone’s home screen—without the need to remove your phone from your pocket.

That might sound ridiculous, but think again: Once you pull your phone from your pocket, you’re instantly lost in messages, email, Instagram—all of these distracting from your focus and flow while working on your PC. Theoretically, you could refuse to open Outlook on your PC and use your phone instead. But you don’t, right? Because the PC is much more convenient—and, in certain situations, playing with your phone is also quite rude.

Your Phone’s functionality is essentially complete, but the landing’s been a little rough. You’ll need to mix and match the right PC and phone hardware to get the most of Your Phone, but the most useful basic features are already available to the world at large. We can also show you what the final.